1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to organizing a job ticket that includes information describing the component files of a print job and, in particular, to a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for organizing a raster image process (RIP) version of the component files associated with the job ticket.
2. Description of the Related Art
Network printing systems generally comprise an assemblage of different printers, client computers, servers, and other components connected over a network. A print job is assembled at a client computer and transmitted over the network to a server linked to a variety of printers. The printers may have different printing capabilities. Thus, for a given submitted print job, some printers in the network may not be able to process the print job. To route print jobs through a network printing system, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) provides Printing Systems Manager (PSM) products that provide centralized and distributed management of a network printing system. The IBM PSM systems manage the flow of print jobs and insure that a print job is routed to a printer that can handle the job.
A print job is comprised of one or more electronically-stored files and the print attributes therefor. The print attributes inform the printer how to process the files. To assemble print jobs, prior art systems include software installed on the client computer that displays a graphical user interface (GUI). Using a mouse, keyboard, etc., the user selects from a menu of options displayed in the GUI the components and print attributes for a print job. The client computer, under control of the installed software, would then create an electronically-stored job ticket based on the information entered by the user.
Job tickets typically only define the print attributes for a single file. Ilowever, a document may be comprised of multiple files, each having one or more print attributes. A file submitted to the printer often includes printer instructions in a page description language (PDL) such as PostScript.TM.. Before a PDL file can be printed, its contents must be converted to a bit-mapped image format, also known as a raster image. A raster image processor translates PDL files to a raster image or RIP version of the file. In the desktop publishing environment, it can take several hours to transform a PDL print file to its RIP version.
In the prior art, an user putting together a document comprised of multiple files would have to manually keep track of the location of the different files and manually assemble the files for printing. Moreover, if users wanted to resubmit a previously generated RIP version of a file in order to avoid the processing time of transforming a PDL file to the RIP format, then they would have to store and keep track of the location of the RIP version of the files. Not only do users have to keep track of the location of the RIP version of the files, but they also have to make sure that the file has not been altered since the creation of the RIP version of the file. Print jobs comprised of multiple documents, which are further comprised of multiple files and the RIP versions of the files, only increase the complexity of the user's task. Thus, there is a need in the art for networking printing systems that eliminate these problems and facilitate the printing of complex documents comprised of multiple files stored throughout the network printing system.